Penn’s Venture Lab held its annual Startup Challenge on April 21, awarding the grand prize to Swinergy, Inc.
Swinergy, a startup co-founded by Wharton MBA first-year Wyatt Frasier and veteran Eugene Alvey, aims to implement a new system to efficiently turn agricultural waste into natural gas. Frasier and Alvey were awarded the Perlman Grand Prize at the Startup Challenge, receiving $50,000 and $15,000 in legal, accounting, and strategy services. Swinergy also won both the Venture Lab Social Entrepreneurship Award and the Summer Venture Award, each worth $10,000.
Venture Lab hosts the annual competition for Penn student entrepreneurs, where finalists can pitch their startups to a panel of judges and a live audience in order to win cash prizes for their ventures.
Alongside the grand prize award, Venture Lab also awarded a number of other prizes to competing startups.
This year’s Startup Challenge finalists consisted of eight startups focusing on issues ranging from patient care to selling personal property. Finalists included Spring, PopEye, Probook, Flagler Health, FullFlock, Nemu, and Zmiles in addition to Swinergy.
“The process was really cool because you’d get a lot of feedback from the judges every single round — so you get to learn from a wide variety of experts what they think and their potential insights into your business," Wharton senior David Navarro, the founder of Zmiles and winner of the Runner-up Award, said.
Swingery co-founder and Wharton MBA first-year Wyatt Frasier said that the extensive coaching leading up to the in-person final round of the competition was “super key" and inspired them to make many changes to their presentation based on the feedback.
“I don’t think we would have won if we didn’t have that help,” he said.
Swinergy co-founders Frasier and Alvey first met in their wastewater disposal class at U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Alvey had grown up farming in Nebraska, and they both studied environmental engineering during their undergraduate years.
“We both joined the army, and [Alvey] had this idea back in 2017, because he knew that farmers have a really hard time managing waste," Frasier said, citing its harm on water and the atmosphere. "So he'd been doing some research, and he found that there was a better way to turn the manure into gas.”
According to Frasier, only about 4% of farms have been using this method, because it entails a longer and more difficult process for managing the waste. However, Swinergy said the system can produce the gas more efficiently and will allow multiple farms to use one machine to make the gas, rather than each farm needing its own.
Frasier said that Swinergy is driven by the need to eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions coming from agricultural waste. The company also takes the natural gas produced from this waste and sells it to domestic pipelines, which will reduce the impact to local water supplies and global climate.
“It was really cool to see all seven other teams in the green room, because we’re all trying to build stuff as students,” Frasier added.
Zmiles, a startup focused on delivering same-day invisible aligner treatment, was awarded $15,000 for the Runner-up Award, $10,000 for the Frederick H. Gloeckner Award for Best Undergraduate Team, and $15,000 in legal, accounting, and strategy services.
Spring, a startup focused on connecting single people in a more authentic way, was awarded $25,000 for winning the Ashton Family Award for Female Founders and the Summer Venture Award. Wharton MBA second-year and co-founder of Spring Annie Xu said it was valuable to have been connected to mentors.
Xu said that one of the judges from the semi-final round approached her after the event to connect her with a previous CMO of another dating app, and she really appreciated being given this opportunity.
"Always try to have conversations with as many people as possible, especially at these events, because they can make you rethink the way you look at your business, and you can get more of a sense of community,” Navarro added.
The 2023 Startup Challenge was held in Tangen Hall and featured a fireside chat from Vivek Sagi, a 2006 Wharton MBA graduate and the chief technical officer of Eventbrite.
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